


Not A Single Teardrop

by Sarina_Hawke_Theirin



Series: Destiny [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/M, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 05:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1767544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarina_Hawke_Theirin/pseuds/Sarina_Hawke_Theirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bouquet of white lilies on the desk and Leandra has gone missing. Anders is an eyewitness to the most tragic event in Hawke's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not A Single Teardrop

I had never before seen Emily as desperate as she was that night. Usually, nearly everything she said was accompanied by a wry smile. Occasionally, she ruffled some feathers with her sarcastic nature and attempts to lighten situations that called for a bit more tact than she seemed capable of using. Her dry wit was both her best feature and her worst. For those of us who truly knew her, we were painfully aware it was her favorite means of defense when she was feeling overwhelmed, uncomfortable or downright scared shitless. If she wasn't angry, a sardonic smirk was her shield of choice to mask any heartbreak life forced her to endure. That evening, however, her façade melted away completely...at least for a time.

It was near dusk when we arrived home to find Emily's uncle Gamlen harassing Sandal. I, of course, skirted past them in an attempt to put as much distance between myself and another bout of Hawke family drama as possible. It was no secret that, with the exception of Leandra, Emily's family held no love for me and, when it came to Gamlen, the feeling was completely mutual. So, I chose the path of avoidance on that particular occasion. I had just reached the landing on the staircase, when something Bodahn said caught my ear.

"Well, those lilies arrived for her this morning."

I turned to the desk to see a large bouquet of white lilies sitting upon it, and my heart immediately sank. I then looked at Emily whose face was set in a pensive frown, and recognized the spark of fear in her green eyes when she glanced in my direction before interrupting the conversation between the dwarf and her uncle.

"White lilies? I think I might know something about that."

"Well, don't just leave me waiting, girl," Gamlen huffed. "What is it?"

The lines in Emily's brow deepened as her lower lip disappeared between her teeth. I hurried to her side and pulled her to my chest before answering the question for her. "There's a killer in Kirkwall who sends his victims white lilies before he takes them. He's murdered several women already."

Gamlen scowled angrily and shook his head. "No one asked you, mage. Why don't you crawl back into the shadows where you belong? This is a family matter and none of your business." He turned his attention to his niece. "He's wrong. Leandra's fine."

Emily peered down at the marble tile beneath her feet before turning her eyes up to mine with a small, appreciative smile. She straightened her back, regaining her composure and sighed. "I suppose it doesn't hurt to be optimistic."

"She probably just took a different path today and got lost," Gamlen reasoned. "That girl never did have the sense of direction the Maker gave a nug. I'm going back to Lowtown to look for her."

"We'll go with you Gamlen," I told him, earning me a sneer from the older man, which I promptly ignored. "With more eyes, hopefully we can find her sooner."

Emily's uncle grumbled something under his breath I couldn't quite make out before retreating to the front door. I moved to follow him, but Emily grabbed my hand before I could take a step. "Do you think we should get Aveline to help us?"

My stomach was in knots. I often wondered how Emily could remain so calm in such situations. It took every ounce of fortitude I possessed not to vomit. Leandra was like a mother to us all, Hawke's rowdy band of misfits, and, although Emily would feel the greatest loss if something happened to the woman, I knew it would cause the rest of us no small amount of pain if she were to die. I gave a casual shrug, trying my best to keep my cool.

"It's up to you, Em."

She gave a sharp nod of her head, causing the dark hair hanging from her ponytail to lightly bounce against her shoulders. "Let's get to the Keep, then...Just in case."

Fortunately, Aveline was just returning from speaking to the Grand Cleric, and she hadn't even reached the top of the first set of stairs leading to the Keep when we found her. After a quick explanation by Emily, the guard captain accompanied us to Lowtown. The entire way, the red-headed warrior's mouth was set in a determined frown and her lids remained narrowed over her green eyes. I knew she was struggling with the same emotions as me.

We found Gamlen near a merchant's stall speaking to an ebony haired boy sporting ratty clothes and worn shoes, which didn't have enough leather left to hide his bare toes, a typical appearance for children forced to grow up in the poverty-stricken streets of Lowtown. Emily quickened her pace to reach her uncle while Aveline and I followed suit.

"I told you already, I saw her," the boy insisted. "But I ain't sayin' nothin' else without gettin' somethin' for me troubles."

Gamlen grabbed the child by his collar. "Why you conniving little bastard. How about a broken nose for your trouble?"

Emily placed a gentle hand on her uncle's arm and his shoulders went slack as he released the boy. She stooped down until she was eye level with the young man before reaching into the small coin purse on her belt and pulling out several silvers. She placed them in his grimy outstretched hand before closing his gaunt fingers around them and presenting him with a kind smile.

"There you go. Enough to buy yourself some food and a pair of new shoes."

The child's eyes went wide upon seeing the small pile of coins in his palm. "I'm your man, through and through. Tell you everythin' I know." He pursed his lips in thought for a moment before continuing. "That lady was here. She looked like she was gonna take the bridge to Hightown, but then a man came up to her. He stumbled and fell down at her feet like he was dead. His hands were all bloody like he'd been in a fight. The lady shook him and I think he said, 'Help'. She got him to his feet and he was wobbly. I remember that part 'cause I thought it was funny. Anyway, they left and that's all I saw."

Emily rose to her full height, and I took her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. She shook her head. "I never thought I'd curse my mother's kindheartedness."

The boy pointed to a large puddle of crimson coloring the street nearby. "The man left some blood. Maybe you could follow it."

"This is ridiculous," Gamlen bellowed. "We're wasting time on this nonsense."

Emily's jaw tightened along with her grip on my hand. I could see her anger rising from the flash in her eyes, which had gone from bright emerald to a deep green. I had to do something to try to diffuse the situation. "Gamlen, why don't you go home and wait for Leandra? In case she shows up there."

He harrumphed loudly, but didn't argue then pivoted on his heel and headed toward his hovel. Emily gave my fingers another tight squeeze before letting go of my hand.

"We need to hurry," she said, more to herself than either Aveline or I.

She ran to the stain on the ground, but there were no more to be seen. Emily spun wildly trying to catch a glimpse of a clue that would tell her which direction her mother might have gone. I bent down and ran my finger through the blood on the stone then recited a spell under my breath to make even the smallest droplet of that particular blood more visible. Within moments, a second stain appeared a few feet away, then another beyond that. Emily didn't even question the sudden appearance of the blood as she ran from one stain to the next.

By the time we reached the end of the blood trail in the Foundry District, I was out of breath from running to keep up with Emily. She stopped and scanned the buildings with frantic eyes. Panic adorned her delicate features, making her appear much older than her twenty four years. Her gaze finally fell upon a familiar building at the end of the darkened street.

"There!" she cried as she raced toward the stone steps leading up to the abandoned foundry.

Once we were inside, we found more blood on the floor and followed it to a trapdoor neither of us had noticed the first time we were there searching for the other women. Emily practically tore the wooden door off its hinges when she pulled it open. She didn't wait for us to follow her down into the dark hole. I'm not even sure she realized we were still there. By the time Aveline and I had our feet firmly planted on the ground, Emily was already fighting several shades that had been triggered by a trap in the floor.

We found the woman, Alessa, soon after, along with the locket Leandra's husband gave her the day Emily was born. Right after that, we located a shrine. A large portrait of a woman who favored Emily's mother hung on the wall in an area that appeared to be set aside as a combination of laboratory and sleeping chamber. In her maelstrom of emotion, Emily blasted the painting with a fireball so hot the entire thing was reduced to a pile of ash within seconds. I tried to comfort her, or, at very least calm her down a bit, but she pushed right past me as she made her way out of the room.

I grabbed Aveline by the arm and we chased after Emily, but she was flying through the tight corridors of the underground chamber so fast, we couldn't keep up. At one point, I feared we lost her until I turned a corner to discern voices echoing from a small anteroom nearby.

Standing at the other side of the room, in front of a chair with the back facing toward us, was a gaunt man who looked to be in his early to mid-sixties with dark gray hair brushed back smooth away from his ashen face. The skin surrounding his deranged, grey eyes was dark from lack of sleep. His robes were made of the finest silk, from Tevinter if I were to hazard a guess, but they were filthy, covered with all manner of blood and the odd dollop of human remains. The air surrounding him reeked of rot, and his insanity cloaked him like a well-worn wrap about his shoulders. He didn't acknowledge either me or Aveline, but continued speaking to Emily, whose chest rose and fell like the tides during the height of a new moon.

I took my place at Emily's side as the man stepped around the chair. "You will never understand my purpose," he explained in a low gravelly tone. "Your mother was chosen because she was special. And now, she is part of something…greater."

My eyes fell on the chair behind the odd stranger to observe a woman sitting there in a tattered, greying wedding gown and veil. My stomach lurched again, but that time I actually tasted the bile that managed to escape my throat. For a moment, I wondered if Emily had worked it all out yet, but one glimpse in her direction told me she was unable to see past her anger enough to recognize the truth of the situation. A large part of me wanted to grab her and pull her away from that place so she wouldn't have to see what had become of her mother. Instead, I continued to stand there like an imbecile, biting my tongue in silence and awaiting the moment she would need me to be the shelter of her upcoming storm.

Emily's lids narrowed into thin slits. "I get it, Quentin. You're crazy," she hissed. "Now tell me where my mother is before I splatter your ass all over these walls."

A twisted, self-satisfied smirk curled the man's lips as his eyes moved to the figure sitting on the nearby chair. "I have done the impossible." His smile widened to a demented grin. "I have touched the face of the Maker and lived." He turned his back to us and walked toward the chair. "Do you know what the strongest force in the universe is?" he questioned as he stood over the gowned woman. "Love," he crooned in a voice that made my blood run cold.

He twisted slowly to face the figure in the chair and caressed her cheek with gentle fingers.  His grey eyes became wistful, filled with maniacal awe. "I pieced her together from memory," he beamed. "I found her eyes, her skin, her delicate fingers." He gave a long, contented sigh and lowered himself to rest on his left knee. "And now, at last, her face." He leaned in closer to her. "This beautiful face," he whispered before closing the gap between them.

Although I couldn't actually see it, I knew he was kissing her, his filthy lips moving against her cold dead ones. My constitution finally gave way, and I turned my head to spew my insides onto the stone below. Luckily, Emily seemed not to have noticed my moment of weakness. Her eyes were glued to the scene unfolding before her, her brow arched in troubled curiosity. Once again, I thought to pull her away and once again, like an idiot, I did nothing.

Quentin stood while holding onto the pale hand of the corpse. "I have searched far and wide to find you again beloved, and no force In Thedas will part us again."

I was expecting a fight. My staff was already in my hand, anticipating the blood mage's first move, but nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. He pulled at the dead hand and I expected the body to fall to the floor…but it didn't. It stood and turned to face us, displaying exactly what that sick bastard had done to Leandra. There was a crude, bloody seam circling the middle of her neck where her head was sewn onto someone else's body. Her eyes were the wrong color, like those of a long dead corpse. It was obvious they once belonged to another of Quentin's victims. Somehow, I managed to swallow back a second wave of vomit. Aveline wasn't so lucky.

I looked at Emily, her green eyes filled with shocked comprehension. I would have given anything at that moment to reach inside her heart and take that pain from her. I glanced at Leandra again and was paralyzed by remembrance.

I had only been living at the manor for a week, and my moving in had put an obvious strain on Emily and Leandra's relationship, so I tried to stay out of the way as much as possible. I even opted to skip all the evening meals when we were at home during supper in the hope it would give Emily and her mother a chance to talk and possibly mend some fences. After three days in a row of that, however, I found myself too famished to sleep. I quietly slipped out of bed and crept to the kitchen to make a sandwich.

Before I got to the larder, I was stopped in my tracks by the sound of a shoe tapping the floor at the doorway behind me. Thinking it was probably Emily, I turned, flashing my most winning smile, only to come face to face with Leandra. She said nothing as she skirted past me to the pantry and rummaged through the shelves. She emerged with an armload of food and dumped it on the kitchen table before going to the cupboard and retrieving two plates. Over the next few minutes, she busied herself spreading mustard onto bread and then covering it with an assortment of meats and cheeses. She pushed one of the plates toward the chair across the table from hers and presented me with a curt nod, ordering me to sit.

It wasn't until I finished nearly half my sandwich, when Leandra peered up at me with a melancholy smile. "These were always my Malcolm's favorites. I would pack them for him when he'd trek off into the Wilds to help the Chasind folk." All I could do was bob my head up and down like a fool with an uneasy smirk. She sighed and placed her half eaten sandwich on her plate before taking my hand. "I understand why Emily cares for you so much. After all the rumors I've heard about you, I was sure you'd bring her nothing but trouble. But now that I've seen the two of you together…I see the way you look at her. It's obvious how much you love her."

"I do," I said. "More than anything."

"You remind me of him, you know…my Malcolm."

"Emily has told me the same thing many times," I acknowledged.

Her smile became genuine as she nodded and picked up her sandwich to take another bite. We didn't speak another word to each other that evening, save a quick and quiet "Goodnight", but that one conversation was all that was needed to repair the rift between mother and daughter.

A shard of ice hit me on my shoulder. "Wake up!" Emily barked. "I could use your help with these shades."

I began throwing ice and lightning intermittently at the beasts, but my heart really wasn't in it at all. I knew that as soon as the battle was over and the madman struck down, I would have to tell Emily the truth. Although her corpse was animated, Leandra was dead. I wasn't even sure if there was any part of Emily's mother left, save her physical features.

The moment Quentin dropped to the ground in a crumpled heap, Leandra stumbled and fell. Emily rushed to her and gathered her mother into her arms. She stared up at me, desperation filling those beautiful emerald eyes. "Anders, help her. Please."

I knelt down next to her and smoothed her hair. "I'm sorry, love. There's nothing I can do. His magic was all that was keeping her alive."

"No!" she screamed while pushing me away. I landed with a thud on the floor behind me. "You're a healer. You can cure her...Make Justice help…Do something!"

Aveline moved to Emily's other side. "Hawke…Anders can't cure death…no one can."

Tears began stinging my eyes. "I'm sorry love" I whispered. "I'm so very sorry."

"Please…don't be so hard on him. This isn't his fault." Emily's head drooped and I saw Leandra's skeletal left hand reach up to touch her daughter's face before giving her a sad smile. "My Emily…I knew you would come."

"You know me, mother," she croaked. "I always save the day."

"Don't fret darling. That man would have kept me trapped here…inside this body. Now I'm free. I can be with Carver and Bethany…and your father again. But you'll be all alone."

I knelt down on the other side of Leandra and gently took hold of the fingers of her right hand. "Don't worry, Leandra. Your daughter will never be alone. I'll take care of her. I swear it." She gave me the same nod of approval she did that night in the kitchen.

Emily waggled her head. "I should have watched over you more closely. I should have…"

 _Shhh,_ Leandra insisted softly. "It's okay…My little girl has become so strong. I love you, Emily. You've always…made me…so proud."

With those words, Emily's mother quietly passed through the Veil. I reached out and shut her eyes with my fingertips and waited for the love of my life to lose her infallible fortitude. I actually held my breath, anticipating her emotional breakdown so I could be right there for her, to be the shoulder she could cry on. Instead, she just sat there, in stillness and in silence, holding onto her mother and staring down at the woman's lifeless face. It seemed an eternity passed before she finally looked up at me. The brilliant green of her irises were dull, the spark faded from existence in that point in time. Although the whites of her eyes glistened in the glow of the nearby lyrium lamp, not one tear touched her cheek. She blinked several times before reaching out and swiping at the dampness on my cheeks then heaved a sigh.

"We should be getting back." She turned her face toward the red-headed woman standing at her side. "Aveline, would you please call some of your guardsmen to retrieve my mother's body?"

The guard captain sniffed and wiped at her own eyes. "Of course, Hawke."

Emily gently laid her mother's head on the stone, stood, then dusted the dirt from her knees. "Are you ready to go home?"

I nodded and took her by the arm to lead her outside. I half expected her to push me away again, but she didn't, not really. She simply flashed the hint of an appreciative smile before straightening her shoulders and walking back out into the corridor on her own. As I watched her go with Aveline trailing closely behind her, I took one final glimpse of the body lying on the ground, and I couldn't stop the tears from flowing. After the way she held it together at the moment of her mother's death, I knew Emily wouldn't allow herself to shed tears of her own. I, however, shed enough for the both of us.


End file.
